How to write a top-tier resume with zero experience

Every freshman I talk to says some version of the same thing: "I don't have anything to put on my resume." That's almost never true. What's true is that they don't know how to write about what they've done, so it reads like nothing.

Here's the good news. Nobody reading a freshman's resume expects a finance internship or a startup exit. What they want is a clean page, specific bullets, and a sense of who you are and what you're curious about. That's achievable for every student, regardless of background, by the end of a single weekend.

This guide covers the rubric we grade every resume against in the program, how to turn duties into outcomes, what counts as experience when you think you have none, and a full before-and-after example.

What a resume is actually for

Your resume is ranked second on the list of things that matter in recruiting, right behind networking. That ranking tells you what it's for. A resume rarely gets you the job on its own. It gets read because a person asked to see it, and then it becomes the agenda for every conversation that follows.

That changes how you should write it. Every line on your resume is a question someone might ask you. So every line should be something you'd enjoy answering, for two minutes, with a story behind it. If there's a line you'd dread being asked about, it doesn't belong there.

The rubric

This is the checklist every resume in the program is graded against. A resume passes when every box is checked. Print it, grade yours honestly, and fix every unchecked box before you send a single email.

What counts as experience

When you think you have no experience, you're usually filtering out everything that doesn't look like an internship. Stop filtering. At this stage, all of these count:

• Jobs of any kind: retail, food service, tutoring, babysitting, delivery, the family business. They show reliability, and reliability is exactly what a manager wants in an intern.
• High school leadership: team captain, club officer, student government, organizing an event, starting something.
• Campus involvement: club roles, committees, residence life, volunteering. A role, not just a membership.
• Projects: a stock pitch, a website, a small business, a research paper, a model in Excel, a campaign for a local shop. Projects count when they have a result.
• Responsibilities at home: translating for family, managing a household budget, caring for siblings. These can be real stories, written carefully and only if you're comfortable sharing them.
• Externships: a structured, short project with a real deliverable. More on these in the externships guide.

In freshman year, keep your high school section with real achievements. By junior year, drop it; your college experience should carry the page by then.

Bullets are outcomes, not duties

The single fastest way to improve a resume is to rewrite every bullet from what you were responsible for into what changed because you were there. The formula: strong verb + what you did + result, with a number wherever you can find one.

How to find the number

Students tell me they don't have numbers. You almost always do. Ask yourself:

• How many people? (customers served, students tutored, members recruited, attendees)
• How much money? (budget managed, sales made, funds raised, costs cut)
• How often? (per shift, per week, per quarter)
• How much time? (hours saved, deadline met, turnaround cut)
• What changed? (before vs. after: followers, grades, attendance, errors)

Estimate honestly if you don't have exact records, and be ready to explain how you got the number. "About 150 transactions a shift" is fine. An inflated number you can't defend in an interview is not.

Strong verbs to start with

A full before and after

Here's a made-up student to show the whole transformation. Same experience, same person. The only thing that changed is how it's written.

• After: EDUCATION — Example State University, B.A. Business Economics, expected June 2029 · GPA 3.6
• After: EXPERIENCE — Example Coffee Co., Shift Lead (2024–present): Handled 150+ transactions per shift; trained 4 new hires on register and closing; cut end-of-night cash discrepancies to zero over three months by adding a two-person count.
• After: LEADERSHIP — Business Club, Events Committee: Planned a 120-person alumni networking night with 6 speakers; ran outreach and a $900 budget.
• After: PROJECTS — Personal valuation of a consumer company (Excel, comparable companies); presented to a 20-person investing club.
• After: SKILLS — Excel (VLOOKUP, pivot tables), Canva · Spanish (fluent) · Interests: long-distance running, local food trucks

Notice what changed. The "after" version has a clear header, specific titles, numbers in most bullets, a project that shows interest in the field, and skills that are real and testable. It also cut "teamwork, communication, leadership" from the skills line, because those are claims, not skills. Show them in bullets instead.

Sample resumes

The best way to see what a finished resume looks like is to read a few. Penn Career Services publishes undergraduate samples by field, and they're some of the cleanest examples out there. They're written for juniors and seniors, so expect more experience than a freshman has. Borrow the format, not the bar: notice where the strongest item sits, how every bullet ends in a result, and how specific the skills are.

Section by section

Header

Name, phone, school email, city, and a customized LinkedIn URL. Nothing else: no photo, no full street address, no objective statement. Make sure your LinkedIn matches your resume, because people will check.

Education

School, degree, major, and expected graduation month and year. Include your GPA if it's 3.5 or higher; otherwise leave it off and be ready to answer honestly if asked. Only list coursework that's specific to the field.

Experience

Organization, title, city, and dates, then two to four outcome bullets. Put your most relevant experience first, not necessarily your most recent. If your strongest item is a project, it can go above a job.

Leadership and activities

Real roles with real bullets. A list of club names tells a reader nothing; one line about what you actually did in one club tells them a lot.

Skills and interests

Only skills you could use in an interview tomorrow: Excel with the specific functions you know, SQL, Python, Figma, languages with your level. Then two or three specific interests that start conversations. "Long-distance running" and "local food trucks" get asked about. "Sports" and "music" don't.

Formatting that passes the 6-second test

Most readers decide in about six seconds whether to keep reading. In those six seconds, a stranger should be able to tell what you're interested in, and your strongest item should be in the top third of the page.

• One page. No exceptions for students starting recruiting.
• One standard font, 10–12 pt body, margins of at least 0.5 inch.
• No photos, graphics, skill bars, color blocks, or two-column templates. They look nice and read badly, and many application systems can't parse them.
• Consistent dates, punctuation, and alignment on every line.
• Saved as a PDF named Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf.

Using AI on your resume, carefully

AI is genuinely useful for resumes, as long as you stay in charge. Use it to suggest stronger verbs, to cut a bullet from three lines to two, or to ask "what questions would an interviewer ask about this line?" Don't let it invent numbers, inflate your role, or add skills you don't have. Every word on your resume is something you're agreeing to talk about under pressure.

Your resume and your intro are the same story

Once your resume passes the rubric, write your 60-second intro: where you're from, what pulled you in, what you've done, and why you're talking to this person. The "what you've done" part should come straight from your top two resume items. When your resume and your intro tell the same story, every interview feels more coherent.

Common mistakes

• Two pages. Cut until it fits.
• Bullets that start with "responsible for" or "helped with."
• A skills section full of soft skills ("leadership, teamwork").
• Listing every club you joined, with no role or result.
• A number you can't explain.
• Typos. Read it backwards, then have someone else read it.

Your weekend plan

1. Move your content onto one clean page: header, education, experience, leadership, skills and interests.
2. Rewrite every bullet with the verb + what + result formula.
3. Find a number for at least half your bullets.
4. Grade it against the rubric and fix every unchecked box.
5. Have one person you trust read it for typos and six-second clarity.
6. Record your 60-second intro using your top two resume items.

In the program, the resume is the Week 1 deliverable, and the weekly 60-minute 1:1 is where we edit it live, bullet by bullet, until it passes. On your own, the rubric is the next best thing: be as honest grading yourself as a stranger would be.